Last night I had a really intensely vivid dream. It was also the first time in which I spoke more than one word of Spanish in a dream. The malaria pills we take, Chloroquine, besides from having a really disgusting taste are also believed to enhance the dreams of some. I’ve heard of people really freaking out because they’re getting such horrible nightmares, but most stories I’ve heard of are people who’s dreams simply become more vivid and lifelike. I’m hoping I’m one in that second group.

Here’s what happened in the dream:

One member of my group is awaiting a package from home (in real life) and in the dream it was delivered. We were all living in a big house together and the package got delivered by a Guatemalan who asked “does Chad live here?” I replied “yes, he lives here” in Spanish and he left the package with me. Somebody opened it and inside were photographs for me! They were from my mom. One of the photographs turned into a video that started playing right in front of me as I was thumbing through the prints. When I was in elementary school we had a yearly school play which she directed or participated in, and in the video I watched in this dream I was back in elementary school with my group members playing parts in some play. The video panned her wearing this earthy yellow-brown colored skort/shirt set (the color was gorgeous, the style of clothing not so much). She was standing in this really brilliant green garden with arms pointed up at the sky while the video did a 360 degree rotation around her. Then it panned over to some tree which most closely resembles a jocote tree here in Guatemala. Jocotes are reddish fruits a little smaller than apricots and grow on enormous trees and are in season right now. The tree in my dream was enormous and it also had an unnatural amount of red and pink foliage. Also in the trees were monkeys. They started out as small columbine looking monkeys and morphed into larger ones. At some point during this morphing of the monkeys I stopped being an observer of the video and started being the one actually doing the filming. I was very interested in getting a good shot of all the interactions of the monkeys and was not at all worried about my proximity to them. They continued morphing until their faces were exactly like human Guatemalan children faces. Then descended from the tree braches and I started kicking them and “psht”ing them (which is how you get rid of street dogs here). They started begging for money and I kept shooing them away as I continued filming. That’s all I remember.

One really interesting point is that I know I was able to read text in this dream. I read the name of my friend to whom the package was actually delivered. This is something I rarely am able to do in dreams.

Another interesting point was the colors. Another friend had told me about the vivid reds and oranges and yellows in his malaria-pill dream, and I had a similar experience with other hot colors a few nights before. I’m going to stop writing now because I really want to fall asleep and experience another cool malaria-pill dream.